>> from the Silicon Angle Media Office in Boston, Massachusetts. It's the cue. Now, here's your host. Day Volonte. >> Hi, >> everybody. Welcome to this cute conversation. I'm Dave Volonte and Stew Minuteman is here with me. We're gonna break down a w s kind of give you Ah, midyear What's happened so far this year with all the events that we've been covering and what to look forward to? Uh, the N Y C Summit is coming up stew. It's been a big year. Obviously. What we came off a re invent. Amazon's got $30,000,000,000 run rate business growing at 40 plus percent per year. That means they're putting 9,000,000,000 of incremental revenue every year into the cloud business. The marketplace, That growth that's roughly as large is tthe e entire Microsoft cloud business, which is astounding >> day that that that's that's the point Amazon definitely has been making for a couple of years. And you're absolutely right. Microsoft is definitely growing at a faster pace than Amazon, and they're running about 75 87 but off a much smaller number. So the incremental add that Amazon has been throwing off the last couple years. Every year they're adding more than an azure every year. So absolutely Amazon, you know, is the lead horse out there. And while you know, the horses on the track behind them are trying fast to catch up Amazon. If you talk about Infrastructures service, AWS is still the lead. >> Well, the big question is. Will that attenuate? And we were at Remember the Nutanix inaugural Nutanix Stop next? Do you rush Pandey, who's very smart guy, somebody we respect a lot. One of the fundamental assumptions they were making is eventually the law of large numbers will catch up to them and know it very well May. But it hasn't yet. I asked John Lovelock, can a company the size of Amazon $30,000,000,000 company grow it for 42% a year? Is that sustainable? And he said, Absolutely. There's nothing to stop them now. Who knows who has the crystal ball? What are your thoughts? >> Yeah, So, Dave, what we saw is Amazon's not sitting still. You know, they always like to say it's always Day one, and if you look at where they're going, the products that they keep throwing off the innovation that they keep moving on and the flywheel that they've had first of customer acquisition with all of the innovations that they're putting out there and the flight well. But I've been talking about the last couple of years the label of data, which is something we want to be a little concerned about. How much data Amazon actually does have both Amazon AWS and Amazon, with all those intelligent devices that are in your homes and connecting everything together. Some people are a little concerned about that. The government's a little bit concerned about that, but absolutely Amazon is going everywhere. We've seen Amazon going into sub segments of the market, going into verticals and going just really broad, really deep. So absolutely I don't see anything slowing a bit on down. It is a company that continues to impress one of >> the challenges. I think those do that that Amazon does have, and this came out of the reinforced >> conference a couple weeks ago in Boston, which was, Ah, conference for security practitioners, a lot of si SOS chief information security officers. The number one challenge that came out of that when you talk to practitioners was their ability to keep up with the innovations that Amazon is putting forth. So, you know, I wonder if we're gonna talk to some commercial customers. You'll see them down the summit probe to see if, in fact, that's part of their challenge. Just the pace at which Amazon brings out new features. But we've done Gosh, we've covered eight events or will have covered eight events this year. Eight productions. It started in the U. K. Where we covered a public sector health care. And then we did the AWS summit London really all about both public sector in the UK as well as the summit in the UK Innovations in the UK around cloud, etcetera, cloud adoption. 12,000 people at the AWS London summit. Now you covered re Mars, which was not the Cube wasn't there, but you were there. What was that show? >> Yes. So, first of all, it's an Amazon >> show, not a native US show, but absolutely showed underneath where eight of us fits into the fulfillment centers of Amazon. And it was about re Marceau Mars A play of course on space. But it was a machine learning automation, robotics in space. So you had the cool blue origin stuff that actually brought in. Robert Downey Jr talked about how he's going to save the planet with, you know, robotics and intelligence out there to help clean up pollution in the globe on and the like. But it was a phenomenal show, but what I said is actually going to show a little bit underneath the covers of Amazon similar what we've seen from eight of us at the reinvent shows over the years. Because, you know, we all know how many boxes air coming to our, you know, our place of home every day and how fast that's going. And so this is what's happening underneath the robotics and machine learning a lot of those Air AWS Service's that are powering that. So it was a fascinating show, Dave and absolutely showed other relationship between Amazon, the parent company. Eight of us, all those cloud service is that helped feed the bigger business. >> Now, June, the Cube covered the D. C. Public sector summit. This is Teresa Carlson's gig. She's the host. Actually, Andy Jassy was there this time. He wasn't there last year when you and I recovering it. And of course, that's all about bringing cloud to public sector, not just federal but all public sector. It includes AH, non profit and education, which talk about in a minute. The big story. There is a jet. I we're talking about tens of billions of dollars going to ah, contract. Oracle, of course, is fighting it. It's going into the courts. I guess they've been a number of reviews or could won't give up its oracle. Amazon clearly is the front runner. Last I read, it was down to AWS and Microsoft, with AWS being the lead contender there. We'll see what happens. I think the decision is coming down this month, July 2019. But it's really again about bringing cloud innovations to public sector. Public sector tends to take things a little bit later than the commercial like. For instance, last year they announced the the VM wear on AWS was available, so you'll see those kinds of things come maybe a year later. But its again. Another big show there 12. 13,000 people there at the D. C Convention center. >> Yeah, Davey, when you talked about the critique of what's happening in Amazon as Amazon goes deeper into all of these verticals How do they help get that information to the user in a way that they need to run their businesses? So my co host for New York City's Cory Quinn was listen to his podcast this morning and he said, That's where Amazon's got dozens of blog's. They've got so many announcements, they haven't done a really good job, something we've seen many companies do. How do I get to you know that business roll and put it in, you know, verbal that they understand, as opposed to just >> Hey, we had 1000 new features >> come out this year and they're awesome. Then you should use everything s o. You know, that's something that, you know the industry as a whole needs to do better at an Amazon. Just in the nature of how fast they're moving is something that they should be able to do a better job. >> And Jennifer is also gonna be in New York City. And one of things he was stressing at reinforce was the marketplace. We had Dave McCann on the just rocketing. I think it was 100,000 census of security subscriptions. I think it was 1,000,000 subscriptions in total so just an amazing ah momentum in the marketplace. But reinforce was all about security. Deep dives on security, chief information, security officers. What came out of that show the big takeaway was was head of AWS is, uh, security. The chief information security officer, Schmidt said. This narrative in the industry that the sky is falling doesn't do anybody any good. Um, it's not productive. We should be more positive. The state of the cloud union is good, like the president of states is State of the Union is strong. Um, having said that, Amazon talks about the shared security model. The practitioners that we talked to said, Yeah, shared model Amazon's going to secure the the infrastructure of the storage, the compute of the database. We are responsible for our end, and it really is on us to make sure that we are secure. So again, back to that point about the pace of innovation that Amazon is putting forth is a challenge for people. AWS imagine is also going down. I think this week what's that you're >> so it's in Seattle and it's you mentioned the public Sector one in D. C, which is government agencies, nonprofits and education. So imagine is a subset of that. My understanding is the education, a nonprofit piece of that from when you and I were in D. C. Last year for the Public sector summit. It's It is impressive how deep Amazon is going into these spaces, the affinity they have. And really, you know how happy the customers are to be able to move fast. So, you know, when you think about nonprofits and think about education, innovation is not the first thing that usually comes to mind because budgets are tight and I don't have enough people. And usually you've got, you know, whatever's left over. But imagine is them. How do we move these forward? How do we You know, we know we need to help transform education. It's so important to train the next generation. So, you know, imagine there are some great stories that come out of that. Jeffrey loves getting those stories, helping us tell those stories through the Cube platform. And so it's the second year we're doing >> Yes, it would be covering that. And then, of course, reinvent will have two sets again that reinvent this year. The Super >> Bowl of our industry, >> right? Sure. Um, something's going on. So unfortunate incidents in Southern California. Big earthquakes, actually. Multiple earthquakes, Right? You had the physical earthquake, and then you had CO I, leonard going to the Clippers. But so I'm interested in sort of poking at this notion of ground stations. So at reinvent last year, Amazon announced on his own ground station, which essentially was ground station is a service. So if I understand it, one of the challenges okay, You launched the satellites, but you still need a ground station to collect the data and then uploaded and analyze it. That's what AWS is is partnering to put in infrastructure that allows you to essentially rent ground station infrastructure. So, you know, they worry about building it in securing it yourself. Because you think about it. It's got to be a secure location. You gotta have fencing. You got a physical security. You got to get the data in. You gotta upload it to the toe. Where we gonna upload it? So Amazon is basically building this service out, saying Don't worry about the ground station piece. Rent that from us, you know, swipe your credit card. Your ground station as a service, and then we'll ingest that data uploaded to the cloud and then apply all of the tooling that we have to allow you to analyze that data. So if you think about the earthquake of devastation, if you don't have a ground station there, you can, in theory, go to AWS and actually spin up a ground station in jest. You know, on the ground, you know, the ground truth as we like to sometimes talk about and actually get satellite imaging and telemetry in that region, you know, this comes into play things like forest fires and all kinds of of natural disaster. >> Dave, even at the remarks show, I attended a session where one of the Amazon partners was talking about not only just getting the satellite data down, but Justus. They have the snowball edge today, which is, you know, for you know, I ot or some remote sites, but some of these satellites are gonna have the compute and storage at in satellite themselves. So if you think about I'm gonna have these geosynchronous satellites. I'm gonna have all this connectivity. And if I could get a gigabit of Ethernet, you know, traffic going to the satellites and I could do the processing at the edge, which is now up in space. I can process that. And you know, that edge that we talked about get to hold another dimension, you know, off off the terra firma to be able to do those kind of analysis. As you said, earthquakes, you know, all the all the climate discussion that's going on, we should be able to have tap into even more. Resource is, and we'll have to rename Cloud if it even goes beyond the Earth. >> And then, um, outpost is the other story that we've been tracking, attracting a lot of stories, but but outpost is starting to ship in beta form. We've seen instances of >> so, so seeing >> it. We just did a little quick right up. >> I mean, Dave, you know, just a ripple went through the >> industry when they showed Hey, here's Iraq and what they're like. This is the exact same rack that we have in the Amazon data centers and why it's a little surprising because we're allowed to see inside the Amazon Data Center. So it's like, Okay, this is what they're computed awaited to 24 in tracking, supposed to a 19 in track. But that line between the public cloud and my on premises environment absolutely is blurring. So everybody wants to see where Amazon's going. They have the big partnership with VM, where Veum, where is already shipping the solution? That is the same software for that Veum wear on AWS in my data center. So, you know, I can have you know, the Dell hardware with the Veum where code or I can have the Amazon hardware with the VM where code coming later this year without post. So that line between public in private is absolutely blurring. And where to my applications live, You know that that future of how fast is eight of us continue to grow? Absolutely. There are applications and data and things that will stay in my own data center and under my control. But that line is definitely blurring. And there's gonna be some re architectures. It's definitely still gonna take a couple of years to sort some of these things out. But we're at some of those inflection points where we'll see some of >> us. So I wrote a post its upon wicked bond kind of analyzing that video, and there's some interesting things that are unique. There's certainly a lot of goodness in there. Not some of the things they talk about are completely unique. Thio, aws. But things like Nitro and their special virtual ization engine and their special chip on Do you want to get a look at that? You take a look at that video and thence to New York City Summit this week. Um, we mentioned some of the innovations that we've seen up to date this year. A lot of talk I'm sure about the marketplace. >> Yeah, I'm wondering if there'll be any ripples, Dave, because the 1/2 of a chick you, too, was supposed to be in New York City. And now it's not, doesn't mean they don't have a strong presence in New York City like London and believe it's somewhere around 12 to 15,000 people. When I went to New York City two years ago was quite impressive. It is a free show, which means if your customer you get in for free. If you're a partner, of course, you're still paying for everything that goes there. But the regional summits are quite impressive and a great way to get in touch with Amazon and all that they're doing. If you don't want to go to the Super Bowl itself, which is, you know, 50,000 plus now in Las Vegas towards the end of the year. >> Yeah, these air, like many reinvents and they're actually quite good. A lot of a lot of practitioner focused on you're gonna you're gonna see that New York City >> did what I always love about every Amazon show I go to. There are customers that are interested learning new things. How can you do better with what I'm doing? But also, how can I change what I'm doing? How can I move forward? So even if it's not adopting the latest and greatest from AWS, the entire ecosystem is going there to meet with those customers and talk about digital transformation? Modern workforce? All of these hot trends definitely play out. Ground zero is the AWS. >> Yeah, and this is by design. As I said before, the pace of innovation is a challenge for people. It's an adoption blocker and so Amazon wants to educate and share the knowledge so that they can get more adoption. OK, stew. Thanks very much. Good luck. This week. Check out silicon angle dot com For all the news, the cube dot net is where the videos will live and watch. Do on John Ferrier and Corey Quinn. Live and check out the cuban dot com for all the research. Thanks for watching Everybody Day, Volonte and Stupid Event. We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBEConversation. >> Hi everyone, welcome to the special CUBEConversation. We're in Palo Alto, California, at theCUBE studio. I'm John Furrier, co-host of the CUBE. We're here with Chris Yeh. He's the co-founder and general partner of Blitzscaling Ventures, author of the book Blitzscaling with Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and a variety of other ventures, also a partner at Greylock Partners. Chris, great to see you. I've known you for years. Love the book, love Reid. You guys did a great job. So congratulations. But the big news is you're now a TV star as one of the original inaugural contestants on the Mental Samurai, just premiered on Fox, was it >> On Fox. >> On Fox, nine o'clock, on which days? >> So Mental Samurai is on Fox, Tuesdays at 9 p.m. right after Master Chef Junior. >> Alright. So big thing. So successful shows. Take us through the journey. >> Yeah. >> It's a new show, so it's got this kind of like Jeopardy vibe where they got to answer tough questions in what looks like a roller coaster kind of arm that moves you around from station to station, kind of jar you up. But it's a lot of pressure, time clock and hard questions. Tell us about the format. How you got that. Gives all the story. >> So the story behind Mental Samurai is it's from the producers of American Ninja Warrior, if you've ever seen that show. So American Ninja Warrior is a physical obstacle course and these incredible athletes go through and the key is to get through the obstacle course. If you miss any of the obstacles, you're out. So they took that and they translated it to the mental world and they said, okay, we're going to have a mental obstacle course where you going to have different kinds of questions. So they have memory questions, sequence questions, knowledge questions, all these things that are tapping different elements of intelligence. And in order to win at the game, you have to get 12 questions right in five minutes or less. And you can't get a single question wrong. You have to be perfect. >> And they do try to jar you up, to kind of scrabble your brain with those devices, it makes it suspenseful. In watching last night at your watch party in Palo Alto, it's fun to watch because yeah, I'm like, okay, it's going to be cool. I'll support Chris. I'll go there, be great and on TV, and oh my, that's pretty interesting. It was actually riveting. Intense. >> Yeah. You have that element of moving around from station to station and it's dramatic. It's kind of a theater presence. But what's it like in there? Give us some insight. You're coming on in April 30th so you're yet to come on. >> Yes. >> But the early contestants, none of them made it to the 100,000. Only one person passed the first threshold. >> Right >> Take us through the format. How many thresholds are there? What's the format? >> Perfect, so basically when a competitor gets strapped into the chair, they call it Ava, it's like a robot, and basically they got it from some company in Germany and it has the ability to move 360 degrees. It's like an industrial robot or something. It makes you feel like you're an astronaut or in one those centrifugal force things. And the idea is they're adding to the pressure. They're making it more of a challenge. Instead of just Jeopardy where you're sitting there, and answering questions and bantering with Alex Trebek, you're working against the clock and you're being thrown around by this robot. So what happens is first you try to answer 12 questions correctly in less than five minutes. If you do that, then you make it through to the next round, what they call the circle of samurai and you win $10,000. The circle of samurai, what happens is there are four questions and you get 90 seconds plus whatever you have left over from your first run, to answer those four questions. Answer all four questions correctly, you win $100,000 and the official title of Mental Samurai. >> So there's only two levels, circle of samurai but it gets harder. Now also I noticed that it's, their questions have certain puzzles and there's certain kinds of questions. What's the categories, if you will, what's the categories they offer? >> Yes, so the different categories are knowledge, which is just classic trivia, it's a kind of Jeopardy stuff. There's memory, where they have something on screen that you have to memorize, or maybe they play an audio track that you have to remember what happened. And then there's also sequence where you have to put things in order. So all these different things are represented by these different towers which are these gigantic television screens where they present the questions. And the idea is in order to be truly intelligent, you have to be able to handle all of these different things. You can't just have knowledge. You can't just have pop culture. You got to have everything. >> So on the candidates I saw some from Stanford. >> Yeah. >> I saw an athlete. It's a lot of diversity in candidates. How do they pick the candidates? How did you get involved? Did your phone ring up one day? Were you identified, they've read your blog. Obviously they've, you're smart. I've read your stuff on Facebook. How did you get in there? (laughs) >> Excellent question. So the whole process, there's a giant casting department that does all these things. And there's people who just cast people for game shows. And what happened with me is many years ago back in 2014, my sister worked in Hollywood when I was growing up. She worked for ER and Baywatch and other companies and she still keeps track of the entertainment industry. And she sent me an email saying, hey, here's a casting call for a new show for smart people and you should sign up. And so I replied to the email and said hey I'm Chris Yeh. I'm this author. I graduate from Stanford when I was 19, blah blah blah blah. I should be on your show. And they did a bunch of auditions with me over the phone. And they said we love you, the network loves you. We'll get in touch and then I never heard. Turns out that show never got the green light. And they never even shot that show. But that put me on a list with these various casting directors. And for this show it turns out that there was an executive producer of the show, the creator of the show, his niece was the casting director who interviewed me back in 2014. And she told her uncle, hey, there's this guy, Chris Yeh, in Palo Alto. I think would be great for this new show you're doing. Why don't you reach out to him. So they reached out to me. I did a bunch of Skype auditions. And eventually while I was on my book tour for Blitzscaling, I got the email saying, congratulations, you're part of the season one cast. >> And on the Skype interviews, was it they grilling you with questions, or was it doing a mock dry run? What was some of interview vetting questions? >> So they start off by just asking you about yourself and having you talk about who you are because the secret to these shows is none of the competitors are famous in advance, or at least very few of them are. There was a guy who was a major league baseball pitcher, there's a guy who's an astronaut, I mean, those guys are kind of famous already, but the whole point is, they want to build a story around the person like they do with the Olympics so that people care whether they succeed or not. And so they start off with biographical questions and then they proceed to basically use flash cards to simulate the game and see how well you do. >> Got it, so they want to basically get the whole story arc 'cause Chris, obviously Chris is smart, he passed the test. Graduate when he's 19. Okay, you're book smart. Can you handle the pressure? If you do get it, there's your story line. So they kind of look from the classic, kind of marketing segmentation, demographics is your storylines. What are some of the things that they said to you on the feedback? Was there any feedback, like you're perfect, we like this about you. Or is it more just cut and dry. >> Well I think they said, we love your energy. It's coming through very strongly to the screen. That's fantastic. We like your story. Probably the part I struggle the most with, was they said hey, you know, talk to us about adversity. Talk to us about the challenges that you've overcome. And I tell people, listen, I'm a very lucky guy. A lot of great things have happened to me in life. I don't know if there's that much adversity that I can really complain about. Other people who deal with these life threatening illnesses and all this stuff, I don't have that. And so that was probably the part I struggled the most with. >> Well you're certainly impressive. I've known you for years. You're a great investor, a great person. And a great part of Silicon Valley. So congratulations, good luck on the show. So it's Tuesdays. >> 9 p.m. >> 9 p.m. >> On fox. >> On Fox. Mental Samurai. Congratulations, great. Great to be at the launch party last night. The watch party, there'll be another one. Now your episode comes out on April 30th. >> Yes. So on April 30th we will have a big Bay area-wide watch party. I'm assuming that admission will be free, assuming I find the right sponsors. And so I'll come back to you. I'll let you know where it's going to be. Maybe we should even film the party. >> That's, well, I got one more question on the show. >> Yeah. >> You have not been yet on air so but you know the result. What was it like sitting in the chair, I mean, what was it personally like for you? I mean you've taken tests, you've been involved with the situation. You've made some investments. There's probably been some tough term sheets here and there, board meetings. And all that experience in your life, what was it compared to, what was it like? >> Well, it's a really huge adrenaline rush because if you think about there's so many different elements that already make it an adrenaline rush and they all combine together. First of all, you're in this giant studio which looks like something out of a space-age set with this giant robotic arm. There's hundreds of people around cheering. Then you're strapped into a robotic arm which basically makes you feel like an astronaut, like every run starts with you facing straight up, right? Lying back as if you're about to be launched on a rocket. And then you're answering these difficult questions with time pressure and then there's Rob Lowe there as well that you're having a conversation with. So all these things together, and your heart, at least for me, my heart was pounding. I was like trying very hard to stay calm because I knew it was important to stay clam, to be able to get through it. >> Get that recall, alright. Chris, great stuff. Okay, Blitzscaling. Blitzscaling Ventures. Very successful concept. I remember when you guys first started doing this at Stanford, you and Reid, were doing the lectures at Stanford Business School. And I'm like, I love this. It's on YouTube, kind of an open project initially, wasn't really, wasn't really meant to be a book. It was more of gift, paying it forward. Now it's a book. A lot of great praise. Some criticism from some folks but in general it's about scaling ventures, kind of the Silicon Valley way which is the rocket ship I call. The rocket ship ventures. There's still the other venture capitals. But great book. Feedback from the book and the original days at Stanford. Talk about the Blitzscaling journey. >> And one of the things that happened when we did the class at Stanford is we had all these amazing guests come in and speak. So people like Eric Schmidt. People like Diane Greene. People like Brian Chesky, who talked about their experiences. And all of those conversations really formed a key part of the raw material that went into the book. We began to see patterns emerge. Some pretty fascinating patterns. Things like, for example, a lot of companies, the ones that'd done the best job of maintaining their culture, have their founders involved in hiring for the first 500 employees. That was like a magic number that came up over and over again in the interviews. So all this content basically came forward and we said, okay, well how do we now take this and put it into a systematic framework. So the idea of the book was to compress down 40 hours of video content, incredible conversations, and put it in a framework that somebody could read in a couple of hours. >> It is also one of those things where you get lightning in a ball, the classic and so then I'd say go big or go home. But Blitzscaling is all about something new and something different. And I'm reading a book right now called Loonshots, which is a goof on moonshots. It's about the loonies who start the real companies and a lot of companies that are successful like Airbnb was passed over on and they call those loonies. Those aren't moonshots. Moonshots are well known, build-outs. This is where the blitzscaling kind of magic happens. Can you just share your thoughts on that because that's something that's not always talked about in the mainstream press, is that a lot of there blitzscaling companies, are the ones that don't look good on paper initially. >> Yes. >> Or ones that no one's talking about is not in a category or herd mentality of investors. It's really that outlier. >> Yes. >> Talk about that dynamic. >> Yeah, and one of the things that Reid likes to say is that the best possible companies usually sound like they're dumb ideas. And in fact the best investment he's been a part of as a venture capitalist, those are the ones where there's the greatest controversy around the table. It's not the companies that come in and everyone's like this is a no-brainer, let's do it. It's the companies where there's a big fight. Should we do this, should we not? And we think the reason is this. Blitzscaling is all about being able to be the first to scale and the winner take most or the winner take all market. Now if you're in a market where everyone's like, this is a great market, this is a great idea. You're going to have huge competition. You're going to have a lot of people going after it. It's very difficult to be the first to scale. If you are contrarian and right you believe something that other people don't believe, you have the space to build that early lead, that you can then use to leverage yourself into that enduring market leadership. >> And one of the things that I observed from the videos as well is that the other fact that kind of plays into, I want to get your reaction, this is that there has to be a market shift that goes on too because you have to have a tailwind or a wave to ride because if you can be contrarian if there's no wave, >> Right. >> right? so a lot of these companies that you guys highlight, have the wave behind them. It was mobile computing, SaaSification, cloud computing, all kind of coming together. Talk about that dynamic and your reaction 'cause that's something where people can get confused on blitzscaling. They read the book. Oh I'm going to disrupt the dry cleaning business. Well I mean, not really. I mean, unless there's something different >> Exactly. >> in market conditions. Talk about that. >> Yeah, so with blitzscaling you're really talking about a new market or a market that's transforming. So what is it that causes these things to transform? Almost always it's some new form of technological innovation, or perhaps a packaging of different technological innovations. Take mobile computing for example. Many of the components have been around for a while. But it took off when Apple was able to combine together capacitative touchscreens and the form factor and the processor strength being high enough finally. And all these things together created the technological innovation. The technological innovation then enables the business model innovation of building an app store and creating a whole new way of thinking about handheld computing. And then based on that business model innovation, you have the strategy innovation of blitzscaling to allow you to grow rapidly and keep from blowing up when you grow. >> And the spirit of kind of having, kind of a clean entrepreneurial segmentation here. Blitzscaling isn't for everybody. And I want you to talk about that because obviously the book's popular when this controversy, there's some controversy around the fact that you just can't apply blitzscaling to everything. We just talk about some of those factors. There are other entrepreneurialship models that makes sense but that might not be a fit for blitzscaling. Can you just unpack that and just explain, a minute to explain the difference between a company that's good for blitzscaling and one that isn't. >> Well, a key thing that you need for blitzscaling is one of these winner take most or winner take all markets that's just enormous and hugely valuable, alright? The whole thing about blitzscaling is it's very risky. It takes a lot of effort. It's very uncomfortable. So it's only worth doing when you have those market dynamics and when that market is really large. And so in the book we talk about there being many businesses that this doesn't apply to. And we use the example of two companies that were started at the same time. One company is Amazon, which is obviously a blitzscaling company and a dominant player and a great, great company. And the other is the French Laundry. In fact, Jeff Bezos started Amazon the same year that Thomas Keller started the French Laundry. And the French Laundry still serves just 60 people a day. But it's a great business. It's just a very different kind of business. >> It's a lifestyle or cash flow business and people call it a lifestyle business but mainly it's a cash flow or not a huge growing market. >> Yeah. >> Satisfies that need. What's the big learnings that you learned that was something different that you didn't know coming out of blitzscaling experience? Something that surprised you, something that might have shocked you, something that might have moved you. I mean you're well-read. You're smart. What was some learnings that you learned from the journey? >> Well, one of the things that was really interesting to me and I didn't really think about it. Reid and I come from the startup world, not the big company world. One of the things that surprised me is the receptivity of big companies to these ideas. And they explained it to me and they said, listen, you got to understand with a big company, you think it's just a big company growing at 10, 15% a year. But actually there's units that are growing at 100% a year. There's units that are declining at 50% a year. And figuring out how you can actually continue to grow new businesses quicker than your old businesses die is a huge thing for the big, established companies. So that was one of the things that really surprised me but I'm grateful that it appears that it's applicable. >> It's interesting. I had a lot of conversations with Michael Dell before, and before they went private and after they went private. He essentially was blitzscaling. >> Yeah. >> He said, I'm going to winner take most in the mature, somewhat declining massive IT enterprise spend against the HPs of the world, and he's doing it and VMware stock went to an all time high. So big companies can blitz scale. That's the learning. >> Exactly. And the key thing to remember there is one of the reasons why somebody like Michael Dell went private to do this is that blitzscaling is all about prioritizing speed over efficiency. Guess who doesn't like that? Wall street doesn't like because you're taking a hit to earnings as you invest in a new business. GM for example is investing heavily in autonomous vehicles and that investment is not yet delivering cash but it's something that's going to create a huge value for General Motors. And so it's really tough to do blitzscaling as a publicly traded company though there are examples. >> I know your partner in the book, Reid Hoffman as well as in the blitzscaling at Stanford was as visible in both LinkedIn and as the venture capitalist of Greylock. But also he was involved with some failed startups on the front end of LinkedIn. >> Yeah. >> So he had some scar tissue on social networking before it became big, I'll say on the knowledge graph that he's building, he built at LinkedIn. I'm sure he had some blitzscaling lessons. What did he bring to the table? Did he share anything in the classes or privately with you that you can share that might be helpful for people to know? >> Well, there's a huge number of lessons. Obviously we drew heavily on Reid's life for the book. But I think you touched on something that a lot of people don't know, which is that LinkedIn is not the first social network that Reid created. Actually during the dot-com boom Reid created a company called SocialNet that was one of the world's first social networks. And I actually was one of the few people in the world who signed up and was a member of SocialNet. I think I had the handle, net revolutionary on that if you can believe that. And one of the things that Reid learned from his SocialNet experience turned into one of his famous sayings, which is, if you're not embarrassed by your first product launch, you've launched too late. With SocialNet they spent so much time refining the product and trying to get it perfectly right. And then when they launched it, they discovered what everyone always discovers when they launch, which is the market wants something totally different. We had no idea what people really wanted. And they'd wasted all this time trying to perfect something that they've theoretically thought was what the market wanted but wasn't actually what the market wanted. >> This is what I love about Silicon Valley. You have these kind of stories 'cause that's essentially agile before agile came out. They're kind of rearranging the deck chairs trying to get the perfect crafted product in a world that was moving to more agility, less craftsmanship and although now it's coming back. Also I talked to Paul Martino, been on theCUBE before. He's a tribe with Pincus. And it's been those founding fathers around these industries. It's interesting how these waves, they start off, they don't get off the ground, but that doesn't mean the category's dead. It's just a timing issue. That's important in a lot of ventures, the timing piece. Talk about that dynamic. >> Absolutely. When it comes to timing, you think about blitzscaling. If you start blitzscaling, you prioritize speed over efficiency. The main question is, is it the right time. So Webvan could be taken as an example of blitzscaling. They were spending money wildly inefficiently to build up grocery delivery. Guess what? 2000 was not the right time for it. Now we come around, we see Instacart succeeding. We see other delivery services delivering some value. It just turns out that you have to get the timing right. >> And market conditions are critical and that's why blitzscaling can work when the conditions are right. Our days back in the podcast, it was, we were right but timing was off. And this brings up the question of the team. >> Yeah. >> You got to have the right team that can handle the blitzscaling culture. And you need the right investors. You've been on both sides of the table. Talk about that dynamic because I think this is probably one of the most important features because saying you going to do blitzscaling and then getting buy off but not true commitment from the investors because the whole idea is to plow money into the system. You mentioned Amazon, one of Jeff Bezos' tricks was, he always poured money back into his business. So this is a capital strategy, as well financial strategy capital-wise as well as a business trait. Talk about the importance of having that stomach and the culture of blitzscaling. >> Absolutely. And I think you hit on something very important when you sort of talk about the importance of the investors. So Reid likes to refer to investors as financing partners. Or financing co-founders, because really they're coming on with you and committing to the same journey that you're going on. And one of the things I often tell entrepreneurs is you really have to dig deep and make sure you do more due diligence on your investors than you would on your employees. Because if you think about it, if you hire an employee, you can actually fire them. If you take money from an investor, there's no way you can ever get rid of them. So my advice to entrepreneurs is always, well, figure out if they're going to be a good partner for you. And the best way to do that is to go find some of the entrepreneurs they backed who failed and talked to those people. >> 'Cause that's where the truth will come out. >> Well, that's right. >> We stood by them in tough times. >> Exactly. >> I think that's classic, that's perfect but this notion of having the strategies of the elements of the business model in concert, the financial strategy, the capital strategy with the business strategy and the people strategy, all got to be pumping that can't be really any conflict on that. That's the key point. >> That's right, there has to be alignment because again, you're trying to go as quickly as possible and if you're running a race car and you have things that are loose and rattling around, you're not going to make it across the finish line. >> You're pulling for a pit stop and the guys aren't ready to change the tires, (snapping fingers) you know you're out of sync. >> Bingo. >> Chris, great stuff. Blitzscaling is a great book. Check it out. I recommend it, remember blitz scale is not for anyone, it's for the game changers. And again, picking your investors is critical on this. So if you picked the wrong investors, blitzscaling will blow up in a bad way. So don't, don't, pick properly on the visa and pick your team. Chris, so let's talk about you real quick to end the segment and the last talk track. Talk about your background 'cause I think you have a fascinating background. I didn't know that you graduated when you're 19, from Stanford was it? >> Yes. >> Stanford at 19, that's a great accomplishment. You've been an entrepreneur. Take us through your journey. Give us a quick highlight of your career. >> So the quick highlight is I grew up in Southern California and Santa Monica where I graduated from Santa Monica High School along with other luminaries such as Rob Lowe, Robert Downey, Jr., and Sean Penn. I didn't go at the same time that they did. >> They didn't graduate when they were 17. >> They did not, (John laughing) and Charlie Sheen also attended Santa Monica High School but dropped out or was expelled. (laughing) Go figured. >> Okay. >> I came up to Stanford and I actually studied creative writing and product design. So I was really hitting both sides of the brain. You could see that really coming through in the rest of my career. And then at the time I graduated which was the mid-1990s that was when the internet was first opening up. I was convinced the internet was going to be huge and so I just went straight into the internet in 1995. And have been in the startup world ever since. >> Must love that show, Halt and Catch Fire a series which I love reminiscing. >> AMC great show. >> Just watching that my life right before my eyes. Us old folks. Talk about your investment. You are at Wasabi Ventures now. Blitzscaling Ventures. You guys looks like you're going to do a little combination bring capital around blitzscaling, advising. What's Blitzscaling Ventures? Give a quick commercial. >> So the best way to think about it is for the entrepreneurs who are actually are blitzscaling, the question is how are you going to get the help you need to figure out how to steer around the corners to avoid the pitfalls that can occur as you're growing rapidly. And Blitzscaling Ventures is all about that. So obviously I bring a wealth of experience, both my own experience as well as everything I learned from putting this book together. And the whole goal of Blitzscaling Ventures is to find those entrepreneurs who have those blitzscalable opportunities and help them navigate through the process. >> And of course being a Mental Samurai that you are, the clock is really important on blitzscaling. >> There are actually are a lot of similarities between the startup world and Mental Samurai. Being able to perform under pressure, being able to move as quickly as possible yet still be accurate. The one difference of course is in our startup world you often do make mistakes. And you have a chance to recover from them. But in Mental Samurai you have to be perfect. >> Speed, alignment, resource management, capital deployment, management team, investors, all critical factors in blitzscaling. Kind of like entrepreneurial going to next level. A whole nother lesson, whole nother battlefields. Really the capital markets are flush with cash. Post round B so if you can certainly get altitude there's a ton of capital. >> Yeah. And the key is that capital is necessary for blitzscaling but it's not sufficient. You have to take that financial capital and you have to figure out how to combine it with the human capital to actually transform the business in the industry. >> Of course I know you've got to catch a plane. Thanks for coming by in the studio. Congratulations on the Mental Samurai. Great show. I'm looking forward to April 30th. Tuesdays at 9 o'clock, the Mental Samurai. Chris will be an inaugural contestant. We'll see how he does. He's tight-lipped, he's not breaking his disclosure. >> I've got legal requirements. I can't say anything. >> Just say he's sticking to his words. He's a man of his words. Chris, great to see you. Venture capitalist, entrepreneur, kind of venture you want to talk to Chris Yeh, co-founder, general partner of blitzscaling. I'm John Furrier for theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)